Chapter XXII
The War Trip of Queer Person
IT WAS ABOUT time for us to be doing something besides loafing at the Fort. Berry saddled a horse one morning and rode out to the camp on the Marias to interview the chiefs. When he returned, a day or two later, he was more than satisfied vith the result of the council, for it was agreed that the winter should be passed on the Marias. We could use the post that had been built two years previously. It needed some repairs, but by the middle of September we were well established there, vith a good stock of goods. The chief difficulty in moving out was our inability to keep the bull-whackers sober. One of them, Whisky Lyons, was the worst I ever saw. He never was on hand to help load the wagons, and when we were ready to pull out we had to hunt him up, tie a rope under his arms, and souse him in the river until he came to his senses. There was another, "Captain" George, whose specialty was a singing spree. He had a large store of quaint songs, which he would sing unendingly when drunk.
I have often wondered whatever became of the old-time bullwhackers, they who spent their money so freely and joyously whenever they had the opportunity. I never heard of them dying. I never saw them after the advent of the railroads and the close of transportation on the upper Missouri. They simply vanished.
There was little for us to do until the prime winter robes began to come in. The Piegans had moved out on Milk River back of the Sweetgrass Hills, and would not return to stay until cold weather drove them in. A few were coming and going all the time, bringing in beaver skins, some to exchange for ammunition, tobacco, and liquor; others to obtain the same from us on credit. We missed Sorrel Horse, who had gone down on the Missouri somewhere below the mouth of the Judith, to run a woodyard, and to trade with the Gros Ventres. He was always good company. During the time of slack trade, Berry was as uneasy as the proverbial fish out of water. Always a very nervous, active man, he could not be happy unless he was doing something. I have seen him throw and shoe a bull that did not need shoeing, or repair an old wagon wheel that could never be of any service. But his most dangerous hobby was medicine. An army surgeon had given him a fine, large medicine chest, which contained dozens of bottles of drugs, drawers full of knives, saws, probes, and various other instruments of torture, lint, plasters, splints—an exceedingly large variety of things. When any of us felt sick we concealed the fact from him if possible, lest he should dose us into our graves.
One day our friend, Four Bears, the camp-crier, a man of great dignity, came in complaining that he felt very ill. Berry was interested at once.
"I think," he said to me, after he had diagnosed the case, "that I have exactly the remedy he needs. A Seidlitz powder will fix him all right. Yes, that's what he needs for sure. I'll give him a double dose." Whereupon he emptied two of the white paper powders into a glass of water and had the patient gulp it down. He then discovered that he had forgotten to put in the powder contained in the green papers.
"0h, well," be said, "'tisn't too late. I'll just dissolve them in more water, I guess they'll mix all right in his stomach."
They did. Four Bears swallowed them and instantly an expression of surprise, of terror, spread over his face. He began to gasp; he bent nearly double and pressed the pit of his stomach; then he dropped to the floor and rolled and rolled, while the foaming mixture spouted from his mouth and nostrils, as does the contents of a seltzer siphon when the lever is pressed. Fortunately, the agony didn't last long, and as soon as he could, the orator sprang to his feet and fled across the bottom to his lodge. We didn't see him again for a month or more. After that the Indians seldom applied to Berry for relief. When they did, they required him to take a dose of his prescription before they would touch it, and they would stand around for a while and watch to see how it affected him.
But if Berry was at his wit's end for something to do, 'twas different with me; no day was too long. Nät-ah'-ki and I went hunting, either in the river bottoms for deer, or out on the plains for antelope. Buffalo, of course, were everywhere; and down below the post some ten or twelve miles there were quite a number of bighorn. And then the evenings were as full of interest as the days. What more pleasant than to be with the women where the flames and glowing coals in the rude fireplace, lighting up the grim log walls of the room, seemed a fit accompaniment to the quaint tales they so earnestly and reverently told. My dingy old notebooks contain the outlines of those happy days, and as I look over them it all comes back to me as vividly as if it all had happened yesterday, or last week. Here for instance is a story the Crow Woman relatecd one evening which may interest you as much as it did me. She called it "The Story of Three Stabs":
"In all the village there were none poorer than White Flying and her young grandson. Her man was long since dead; her son-in-law had been killed by the Sioux; and her daughter, while working in their little plantation one day, had suddenly dropped to the ground and ceased breathing. The boy was still too young to go on the hunt, so they lived on what small store of corn they could raise, and what portions of meat were given them by the kind-hearted. There were days when they went to bed hungry, for their best friends sometimes forgot to provide for them, and White Flying was too proud to go out and beg. When this happened, the boy would say, 'Never mind, grandmother, wait until I grow up and I'll kill more meat than you can take care of.'
"The boy's name was Sees Black, a name an old medicine man had given him when he was born. No one but his grandmother so called him; he was nicknamed Queer Person, for he had ways different from those of any other boy ever heard of. He never played with other children, never laughed nor cried, and scarcely spoke to anyone except his grandmother. He seemed to be dreaming of something all the time; and would sit on the bank of the river, or on the hill near the village, often for half a day, looking straight away into the far distance as if he saw there things of great interest—so great that he never noticed people who passed near him. He brought strange and forbidden things to his lodge; once, a human skull, which he placed under the end of his couch. When making up his bed one day, the old woman found it, and it frightened her so that she fell right down and was dead for a while. When she came to life, she begged him to take it back to the place where he had found it, and he did so at once, for he was a good boy and always obeyed her. When she asked him why he had taken it, he replied, 'I am seeking a great medicine. I thought that if I slept by it I might have a powerful dream.'
"Sometimes he would leave the village and stay away all night; and when his grandmother asked him where he had been, he would tell her that he had gone upon the plain, or down in the timber, or out on a sandbar, to sleep, hoping that some of the spirits or animals who wander about in the darkness would have pity and give him the medicine he sought.
"While other boys of his age still played, he made bows and arrows. He watched the flint workers, and became as skillful as they in chipping out sharp, thin arrow points. He hunted, too; at first, rabbits in the rosebush thickets; and then, one day, he brought home a fine deer—a part of the meat at a time—which he had shot on a trail they used in going to and from their watering place. After that he seldom hunted rabbits, but often brought in deer, and once in a while the hide and meat of a buffalo which he crept up on and killed in a coulée, or at the river where they went to drink. Still, they were very poor; all the family horses had long since been given the doctors who had tried to cure the grandfather. Without horses Queer Person could not go out on the big hunts and bring in loads of meat sufficient to last during the bad weather, or through the long sieges of the Sioux against them. In the summer time this enemy came often in great numbers and stayed around the village for a whole moon and more, hoping to starve the people and fall upon them when at last they were obliged to go out to hunt.
"The summers and the winters passed. The boy grew and grew, tall and strong, and very fine-looking. He was now old enough to go to war; to fight the enemy and drive away their horses. But no war party would let him join them. 'One who slept with skulls,' they said, 'who went forth to sleep where the ghosts wandered-there was surely something wrong with such a person; he would cause bad luck to befall them.'
"Of course, the young man felt very badly about this, grieving much; and the grandmother grieved with him. And then he became angry. 'I will make them take back their words,' he said to the old woman. 'I vill go against the enemy by myself, and the time shall corne when they will beg to go with me. Make me a boat and I'll float down the river to the camps of the Sioux.'
"White Flying went out and cut the willows, crossed and recrossed them, bent them to the proper shape, then stretched and bound upon the frame the fresh hide of a big bull, and the boat was done. No, it was not like the boats of the white men. it was flat on the bottom and round, like the tubs white people have for washing clothes. Unless one was accustomed to them, he was helpless, for, if he did not upset when he tried to paddle, he would only make the boat whirl around and around like a child's top, and it would drift wherever the current and the wind chose to push it.
"There was a full moon now, and one night when it rose, soon after the sun had gone down, Queer Person got into his boat and pushed it out from the shore. No one was there to see him leave, except his grandmother; no one else in the village knew that he was going away. 'Oh, be careful!' she said. 'Be ever on the watch for the dangers, and try nothing that you are not certain you can do.'
"'Take courage,' he called back to her. 'I will return to you; I will surely return. My dream has told me that I will.'
"The poor old woman sat down on the shore, covered her head vith her robe, and cried; cried for those loved ones who were dead, and for the young man who was going, perhaps, to join them and leave her alone in her old age. She was very unhappy.
"On and on Queer Person drifted in the bright moonlight, down the wide, deep river, never paddling except to keep facing downstream and to avoid the snags and sandbars. The beavers played and splashed around him, and he prayed to them: 'Pity me,' he said; 'give me of your cunning, so that I may escape all danger.'
"Where the water boiled and swirled under the shadow of a high-cut bank, some dim thing rose above the surface, and slowly sank and disappeared. He could not see it plainly; it might have been one of the people who live in the dark, deep places; he prayed to them also, and dropped a sacrifice to them. 'Do not harm me,' he said; 'let me pass over your waters in safety.'
"All the animals of the valley seemed to be gathered along the shores, feeding, drinking, the young of elk and deer running and playing along the sandbars. There were big bears snuffling and pawing at the water's edge; wolves and coyotes looked down at him as he passed under the low bluffs. But none paid any attention to him, for there was no wind, and they could not know that an enemy was near. Thus the night passed, and with the daylight he went to the shore, dragging his boat into some thick willows and then smoothing off the trail he had made across the sands.
"Thus drifting by night and hiding in the daytime, Queer Person kept on toward the country of the Sioux. Every morning, after going ashore, he would walk out to the edge of the timber, sometimes climbing a nearby slope, and look carefully up and down the valley for signs of people. He saw none until the fifth morning, when he discovered a great camp directly across the river in a big bottom. There was a long strip of cottonwoods bordering the stream; the lodges were pitched on the open plain back of it. A large number of horses were tied in the camp, people were just coming out and turning them loose to graze. 'My medicine is good,' he said to himself, 'I have come safely down the river, and here I am in sight of that which I seek.'
"During the day he slept for some time, feeling quite safe where he was, for the enemy had no boats, the river was very high, and they could not cross. He made plans for the night. 'I will cross over,' he said, 'after the light in their lodges dies out; I will take some of their horses, and ride homeward as fast as I can.' All the afternoon this thought pleased him, and then came into his heart another thing which he considered. Anyone could go into a camp and take horses and have a good chance to escape with them. That was easy to do. His people had refused to let him go with them on raids; he wanted to do some great thing, to show them that he was a braver man than any of them. What should he do to prove this? What could he do? He considered many things, many plans, and could not decide. Toward evening he slept again, and then his dream helped him and showed him the way to make a great name for himself.
"This is what he did; listen to the cunning his dream gave him: In the night he crossed the river, put some stones in his boat, then cut a hole in the bottom, so that it filled with water and sank. Then he went into the timber and buried his things beside a large cottonwood log, buried his clothes, moccasins, weapons; nothing remained on him except his belt and breechclout. Lastly, he unbound his braided hair, washed it to straighten out the kinks, then tangled it and scattered dust in it. He smeared mud and dust on his body; soiled his breechclout; scratched his legs with a rose bush; when he was done, he looked very wild, very poor. He went out of the timber, down to the lower end of the bottom, and remained there the rest of the night.
"When the sun came up and people were moving about, Queer Person arose and walked toward the camp, sometimes stopping and looking around, sometimes running, again walking slowly, looking to the ground. Thus he approached the lodges, and the great crowd of people who stood staring at him. He pretended not to see them, walking straight on; they parted to let him pass and then followed him. He stopped by a fire outside a lodge, upon which some meat was roasting, and sat down, The women tending it fled. The people gathered around him and stood and talked. Of course, they thought him crazy. A man came up, asked him many questions in signs; he did not reply, except occasionally to point down the river. This man had a wide scar on his left cheek. Queer Person knew that he was a chief. He had heard his people talk about him as a terrible man in battle. After a time an old woman came and set some broiled meat before him; he seized it and ate it as if he had been starving for many days. He ate a great deal, and a long time. The people mostly went away to their lodges. The scar-faced man made signs again, but when he got no answer he took Queer Person by the arm, made him get up, and led him to his lodge, showed him a couch, made signs that it was his, that he should live in the lodge. Still the young man pretended not to understand, but he remained there, going out sometimes but always returning. People made him presents—moccasins, leggings, a buckskin shirt, a cowskin robe. He put them on and wore them. After a few days he would walk about in camp, and the people would hardly notice him. They had got used to seeing him around.
"Queer Person soon found that the scar-faced chief was a very cruel man. He had five wives, the first one older than he, and very ugly. The others were all young women, and good-looking, one very pretty. The old wife abused the others, made them do all the work and labor hard all day long. Sometimes she struck them; often she would talk to the chief, and he would get up and beat them or seize a couple and knock their heads together. They were very unhappy. The young man could not help but look often at the youngest one, she was so pretty and so sad. He would always walk around where she was at work, and met her often in the grove when she gathered wood, and then they would smile at each other. After many days, he found her all alone in the woods one evening; his time had come, and he quickly told her in signs who he was, that he was not crazy; that he had started all alone to war. And then he said that he loved her; that it made him sad to see her abused. He asked if she would go away with him and be his woman. She did not answer, but she just stepped up and clung to him and kissed him. Then they heard someone coming, and they parted.
"The next day they met again in the timber and went and hid in the thicket willows, and made their plans to leave. They could hardly wait for night to come.
"When the fire had died out and the chief and his old wife snored, Queer Person and the young woman crept out of the lodge and went to the river. There they tied together two small logs and placed their clothes upon them, on top of a little pile of brush they had laid. The young man got his clothes and weapons which he had buried, and piled them there also. Then, with nothing but his knife, be went back to the lodge, leaving the woman by the raft. He crept in, and over to the chief's couch, raised his knife, and gave him one deep stab right in the heart, then another and another. The man did not cry out, but he kicked a little and the old woman beside him awoke. Queer Person at once seized her by the throat and strangled her until she lay still. Then he scalped the chief, took his weapons, and ran back to the raft. The woman was waiting for him, and together they waded out, pushing the logs, and when they got into deep water they swam, holding on to the logs with one hand. Thus they crossed the river and dressed and started on the long walk to the Arickaree village. Back across whence they had come, all was quiet; the trouble there had not yet been discovered.
"What a proud old woman White Flying was when her grandson returned home with his pretty wife, with the scalp and the weapons of the terrible chief. He had made a great name: in time he himself would be a chief. And he did become one, the head chief of his people. No one any longer called him Queer Person: he took the name Three Stabs, and all were proud to call him that. He and his good wife lived to great age. They had many children and were happy."